What Made Us Americans essays

What Made Us Americans essays As an American citizen, have you ever given any thought of the land that your standing on? Do you know as an American, you give part of yourself to this nations character? Well, you do. For several intellectual generations, a dispute has raged over the concept of the frontier, as articulated by Fredrick Jackson Turner in 1893. He posed his belief that the American frontier was at the root of American exceptionalism. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics (Turner, 549). The Frontier created a new exceptional person- an American. He promoted that the American character was shaped by the continuous confrontations Americans had with an ever changing frontier that moved civilization westward. Turners conclusion about American characteristics is not because of the frontier, but of the American people who have accomplished many people dreams and made American what it is today. Turners thesis is useless as a guide for the presen t and future, because the Frontier did not make American and its people exceptional. The frontier can be used objectively to gain a knowledge about the history and process of western expansion. But many Americans would not admit to say that they are proud of what our people did to the early settlers (Indians). American Frontier experience has been involved its own environment problems, contacts with Indians, and economic and social organization. Long before the white man set foot on American soil, the American Indians, or rather the Native Americans, had been living on this land. When the Europeans came here, there were probably 10 million Indians north of present-day Mexico and they had been living here for quite some time. So, when the Europeans started to arrive in the 16th- and 17th-century they were met by Native Americans. It was the Europeans' cultural arrogance, coupled with their ...